Network Function Virtualization is a term or a name of a proposed architecture of telecom services as published by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in a series of documents available from the ETSI website. NFV uses generic hardware platform and software adapted for the generic hardware platform. Thus, NFV creates a network much more flexible and dynamic than a legacy communication network. In NFV-based networks, a Virtual Network Function (VNF) decouples the software implementation of the network function from the infrastructure resources it runs on by virtualization. A network service is based on one or more VNFs and/or Physical Network Functions (PNFs), their interconnections, and chaining definitions. The VNFs can be executed on almost any generic hardware processing facility. Therefore, VNFs may be installed, removed, and moved between hardware facilities, much more easily, less costly and thus, more frequently. The flexibility of the NFV-based network enhances the means available for optimizing the network's capacity and performance.
Very generally speaking, optimizing a communication network is based on two main considerations. First, the service should be provided closest to the subscriber to reduce long haul traffic. Second, processing, storage and similar resources should be centralized to enable efficient usage and distribution among subscribers.
These considerations are obviously contradictory, and optimization means balancing between them. The balance is based on the cost and the profit associated with each of the considerations. The cost and the profit are varying continuously and may be different for different services and for different customers. It is noted that there are further considerations associated with particular services. This makes the optimization of the NFV-based network a complex and perpetual task.
Unlike a legacy network, the NFV-based network has two topologies: the topology of the hardware devices, and the topology of the VNFs (the distribution of VNFs among the hardware devices). Another benefit of the NFV-based network is that modifying the software topology (the distribution of VNFs among the hardware devices) is much less costly than any modification of the hardware topology. However, any modification of the network has its cost, including the cost of making such modification possible (such as maintaining excess resources of intermediating operations and session continuity). It is also noted that NFV-based network enables flexibility of the fail-safe network design and reducing the cost of providing redundancy.
There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.